


but my dark side is true

by callunavulgari



Series: Dark Month Collection [35]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Age Difference, Age Switch, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Barebacking, Breaking and Entering, Comeplay, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, Enthusiastic Consent, Light BDSM, M/M, Marking, Mildly Dubious Consent, Oral Sex, Possessive Behavior, Power Play, Rough Sex, Size Difference, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-29 01:27:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is helping someone hide the bodies. Serial Killer AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but my dark side is true

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Conigliomannaro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Conigliomannaro/gifts).



> Dark Month, Day 10. Lisa left the prompt: "The person that you'd take a bullet for is behind the trigger," with Axel/Roxas in mind. My brain decided to supply serial killers and age differences with a reversal of ages because after [this picture](http://nijuukoo.tumblr.com/image/59908743742) I have wanted older!Roxas and younger!Axel so bad that it hurts. Just, yes, delicious. While this is still technically dark, I got a little caught up in how awesome young Axel is, so it's not as dark as I intended. Whoops. Title is from [Kinda Outta Luck](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPAemNbS85A) by Lana del Ray, because that song is this fics theme song.

The sun is high in the sky the day that Roxas meets Axel. It’s perfectly pleasant—fall crispness in the air, people on the streets already talking about corn mazes and caramel apples. He’s coming home from a meeting, loosening his tie and rolling his sleeves up to his elbows—not because he’s hot, but because the world around him is too perfect to not feel on his skin.   
  
It’s half past four, and he’s considering stopping for a late lunch or something, when he sees the kid, fiddling with his ipod and not looking where he’s going. His head’s bobbing a little, foot tapping, about to step out into the street because he can’t see that the walk sign’s flashing a countdown and a speeding car isn’t stopping.  
  
He doesn’t think. He tosses his briefcase down, hoping that no one will steal it (not that it’ll matter, he’s got all the papers backed up on digital drives), and diving for the stupid, _stupid_ kid.   
  
They hit the ground hard, Roxas rolling so he doesn’t crush the kid, but also so they don’t end up rolling into the street and getting hit anyway. He feels his elbow smack painfully into the pavement—hears his glasses crunch somewhere behind him—sees the way his wrist bends and then _snaps_.  
  
There’s blood smeared across the pavement, a streak like a rainbow—adrenaline still surging in his system, dulling the pain into a persistent ache instead of sharp agony. He rolled, so the kid ends up on top of him, eyes wide and surprised and _so very green_ as he takes in Roxas beneath him, squinting in pain.  
  
He thinks somebody’s shouting and that one of his dress shoes came off somewhere in the mess— _knows_ that he bit his tongue because the taste of blood is thick in his mouth. Ex-military, he shouldn’t have taken that much damage. Getting discharged from his tour overseas because his dad and brother died and he needed to take over the family business didn’t make him forget everything he learned in basic, he’s gotten sloppy, that’s all there is to it.  
  
“Shit, sir, you okay?” the kid asks, and he’s got this molasses slow drawl—something vaguely southern but not quite, like he's in the process of growing out of it.  
  
He groans, squeezing his eyes closed and clutching his wrist. The adrenaline’s starting to fade despite the way the kid sitting on top of him is itching at his fight or flight instincts, and the pain’s kicking a sharp, agonizing hole in his self-control.   
  
Soft fingers brush against his wrist, and he shudders when the bone grates together. “Sorry,” he gasps, feeling moisture against his lashes.  
  
The kid snorts at him. “Don’t be sorry, dude. Pretty sure you just saved my life, I should be thanking you.”  
  
He opens his eyes just in time to see the way the kid takes in the blood on the pavement—from his elbow, he realizes, suddenly aware of the wetness there—his eyes going weirdly dark as they follow the trail of blood.   
  
“Shit,” the kid hisses sympathetically, but his eyes are just a shade too cool. It rubs him wrong, makes him feel like he's missing something. “That’s gotta hurt.”  
  
Roxas snorts, because yeah, it really does, and then the ambulance is pulling up and the guy’s climbing out of it are ushering the kid out of his lap.   
  
He closes his eyes—forgetting his worry—just for a minute.  
  
.  
  
He wakes up in a hospital room, blinking up at the too-white ceiling. There’s a television in the corner of the room, some lady on the tv talking about how they’ve found the body of some girl who’d been stabbed thirteen times and dumped into a ditch. He’s hooked up to an IV and his wrist is wrapped tight in a cast.  
  
The kid from before is sitting beside him, a textbook in his lap and a notebook on top of that, pencil moving steadily across the paper. He’s got a backpack sitting by his feet.  
  
Roxas coughs and the kid glances up at him through his lashes. He smirks, one corner of his lip kicking up until his cheek dimples. “Hey there, sleeping beauty. Or would it be my knight in shining armor?”   
  
“Why can’t it be both?” he asks, cautiously trying to push himself into a sitting position.   
  
The kid nods a little, like _okay, yeah, both is good_. “I grabbed your briefcase,” he says, gesturing to the side of the hospital bed. Roxas blinks and yep, that’s definitely his briefcase.  
  
“Why'd they even let you on the ambulance?” Roxas asks, reaching out with his good hand and bringing the cup of water beside him to his lip. He sips, letting the crispness wash the lingering taste of blood from his teeth.  
  
“Told them you were my boyfriend,” the kid grins, like that's a good thing, clever as hell right there.  
  
Roxas stares at him. “You’re kidding me, right?”  
  
The kid’s eyes go a little shuttered, dark, brow crinkling up. “Yeah, why? You homophobic? Regretting saving my ass already?”  
  
Roxas huffs a sigh. He's too tired for this bullshit. “No, kid, I’m not. But you’re what? Sixteen? Seventeen at most?”  
  
“The age of consent is sixteen,” the kid chirps. Gone is the coldness from five seconds ago, now he's sounding downright cheerful. It's weird, makes something scratch at the back of his brain, like he's forgetting something. The kid is still looking kind of shifty though.  
  
“So you’re sixteen?” Roxas presses, raising his eyebrow.  
  
The kid bites his lip. “Okay, so I’m fifteen, but I’ll be sixteen in seven months, so I dunno, almost there!”  
  
“I’m _twenty-nine_ ,” he hisses. “ _Jesus_ , you’re gonna get me arrested.”  
  
The kid shrugs. “They didn’t ask me how old I was. If they do I’ll just lie.”  
  
The room lapses into silence for a moment, the skittering of the kid’s pencil and the vague hospital sounds outside barely drowning out the white noise.   
  
“So, what’s your name?” he asks, pushing a button that he’s _pretty_ sure will pump more painkiller into his veins.  
  
“Axel,” the kid goes, beaming over his schoolbooks. “And you’re Roxas. I kind of swiped your wallet so I could put on a decent act for the medical professionals.” He tosses the wallet into Roxas’ lap, still grinning. “Don’t worry. Promise I didn’t steal anything.”  
  
He checks anyway, rolling his eyes when the kid—Axel—just laughs at him. “What time is it? Don’t you have school in the morning?”   
  
Axel clicks his tongue, lifting up his notebook so he can turn a page of his… biology textbook, apparently. “It’s barely ten, dude. Don’t you know kids nowadays don’t go to sleep until four? It’s totally tumblr’s fault.”  
  
“I don’t know what that is,” Roxas sighs, settling back more comfortably as the pain meds finally hit him.   
  
He squints at the kid, finally taking note of his appearance. He looks kind of punkish, fire-engine red hair poking out in unruly spikes from beneath an ugly gray beanie. He’s thin and _short_ —holy shit, Roxas remembers being that tiny at his age, getting teased by the assholes on his track team. He’s got an ugly ass scarf looped around his neck, a weird black and white jacket, and obnoxious _bright red_ pants. On top of that, he’s wearing _loafers._ Okay no, not punkish. Hipster? Roxas thinks that’s the term at least. It’s either that or just color blind.  
  
“Your clothes are really weird,” he mutters, slurring his words a little. Axel’s eyes crinkle up in amusement.  
  
There are _tattoos_ standing out stark against his cheekbones. What fifteen year old gets tattoos on their face?  
  
“And you’re really high,” Axel says. “Get some sleep. I’ll keep watch. Don’t want the scary nurses to get my knight in shining tiaras.”  
  
He thinks about protesting, but whatever drugs they gave him are good enough that they’re already tugging on his eyelids.  
  
.  
  
He wakes up once during the night and the kid’s still next to him, books in a pile on the floor next to his bookbag. He’s scooted the chair closer, hunched over, pillowing his head on the bed beside Roxas.   
  
His beanie has come ever so slightly askew at some point, and Roxas isn’t high anymore, so he has no excuse for stroking his fingers through the kid’s hair. It’s soft, for probably being dyed a million times a year, a little gritty from leftover product, but nice.   
  
The kid smiles in his sleep, shifting closer, and letting out a low rumble, something between a sigh and a purr.  
  
Roxas carefully removes his hand.  
  
.  
  
The next time he wakes up, the sun is shining through the windows and the kid’s gone.  
  
.  
  
Working for a major business sucks when you’ve got a broken arm, but at least Roxas has lackies to do some of the work for him. Even still, by the time he gets home his wrist is aching something fierce, and he fumbles the key three times before he gets it into the lock.  
  
Maleficent greets him, meowing plaintively and rubbing herself against his slacks.  
  
“Hello to you, too,” he sighs tiredly, undoing his tie as he makes his way to her food bowl. He tosses it behind him and starts up on the annoying process of unbuttoning his shirt with only one working hand. He shimmies out of his slacks as he’s scooping food into her bowl and is just starting to slide his boxers off when a voice comes from behind him.  
  
“Not that I’m not enjoying the show, but I should probably tell you you’ve got company.”  
  
He yelps, spinning around, socks slip-sliding on the kitchen tile.  
  
There, sitting on his ugly plaid couch is the kid from yesterday, his outfit just as eye-searing as the day before. This time his pants are kelly-green and the undershirt is bright purple. The loafers, beanie, and scarf are the same, but the jacket’s missing. He searches, and yep, there it is, thrown over the back of his couch.  
  
Axel’s smirking at him by the time Roxas yanks his attention back to the kid’s face. “Like what you see?” Axel purrs at him, waggling his too-red eyebrows in Roxas’ direction.  
  
Heat flares across his cheekbones—searingly. His mom always did tell him he blushed like a cherub. “How the hell did you get in here?” he hisses indignantly, fighting the urge to cover his nipples.   
  
“Picked the lock,” the kid shrugs, cooing when Maleficent leaps up and settles into his lap.   
  
He doesn’t ask how the kid knew where he lived, because he already knows the answer. If he’d gotten Roxas’ name off his driver’s license, he’d probably seen the address too. “Why are you here?” he asks instead.  
  
“I was bored,” Axel says innocently. “Figured I’d see what my knight in shining armor is up to. Do you always take your clothes off in the middle of your living room? Because if so, I might be installing some cameras.”  
  
That’s… horribly inappropriate, but so is the kid being in his house right now. “Only when I’m about to _shower_ ,” he growls.  
  
“No girlfriend? No wife or kids?” Axel asks with a shit-eating grin. “Living the bachelor lifestyle all the way up to your thirties, nice going, man.”  
  
“We’re on a break,” he shrugs, because it’s true in the sense that him and Xion have been ‘on a break’ for the last four years. One half of a relationship being in Africa hadn’t spelled good things for either of them, so they’d agreed to put things on hold until she got back. _When_ she was getting back was the bigger question.  
  
“Good,” Axel says, nodding. “I mean, I figured. No one came to the hospital and apparently your emergency contact hasn’t been updated since your dad died, so yeah.”   
  
He trails off, awkwardly, but perks up after a couple seconds pass. “You want company during your shower?” he chirps, leering, and Roxas… kind of can’t help the way his eyes trail down the kid’s body, wondering what it might look like bare. It’s not really sexual, not really, one of those actions you don’t think about before doing, but he blushes like it is, and then it is sexual, because he’s twenty-nine and hasn’t had sex since he was twenty-five.   
  
Axel laughs at him.  
  
Roxas throws his slacks at his face.  
  
.  
  
“Look, you’re young,” he starts, awkward. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t put his clothes back on—why he’s standing here in just his boxers and socks. The only excuse he has is that it’ll be even more awkward to put the clothes back on as Axel watches, judging him. He crosses his arms over his nipples, but that just makes him feel even more naked. “I know that kids kind of form impressions on people based on their actions, and trust me, I would do it again in a heartbeat, it was totally worth the broken wrist and fucked up—sorry— _messed up_ elbow, but—” he breaks off, stammering. He has no idea how to say 'seriously kid, you can’t fuck me.'  
  
Axel’s smirking by the end of it, leaned forward with his chin on his hands, eyes sparkling with amusement. “No, go on,” he says, waving a hand at him. “This is the most entertaining thing I’ve done all day—I mean, it doesn’t have to be—” He leers, unashamed. “—But it’s really great fun.”  
  
“Look, kid, you can’t fuck me,” he finally says, all in a rush, like word vomit. Shit, he’d meant to say it nicer than that.  
  
“Why not?” Axel asks, cocking his head.  
  
He’s blushing again. “Because you’re _fifteen_. I’m almost twice your age!—”  
  
“I notice you aren’t saying you’re not into dudes—”  
  
“—And I’m not into guys,” he finishes, even though it’s not strictly speaking true.  
  
As if sensing this, Axel raises a disbelieving eyebrow. “Dude, no one takes that long checking me out unless they’re kind of into me.”  
  
“ _You have really ugly clothes!_ ” Roxas shouts, and Axel splutters with laughter.  
  
“Sure,” he says a moment later, wiping tears of mirth from the corners of his eye. “That’s totally why.”  
  
Then he stands up, giving time for Maleficent to hop out of his lap before straightening all the way. He stretches, long and slow, back arching, arms over his head—a sliver of hip showing through the gap between his shirt and pants, fine red hairs leading down—  
  
Roxas snaps his head back up, guilt churning in his stomach, and Axel’s smirking, significantly closer than he was—  
  
He backs Roxas all the way up against his wall, slotting his leg between Roxas’ and grinning wickedly, so close that Roxas goes a little cross-eyed trying to bring him into focus. He really needs to buy new glasses.   
  
“C’mon,” the kid purrs, rocking his hips up a little bit, smirk broadening when he feels Roxas’ dick twitch against his belly. “I know _you_ want to—you know _I_ want to—what’s wrong here, I mean, besides the fact that my ass isn’t wrapped around your dick already.”  
  
“State law says that until you turn sixteen, you don’t _know_ what you want,” he hisses from between gritted teeth. His cock has managed to go from barely hard at all to raging erection in like, three minutes tops, and he hisses again when Axel grinds himself against him.  
  
“Trust me, man,” Axel murmurs, leaning in and mouthing Roxas’ jaw, teeth tugging playfully at his skin. “ _I know what I want._ ”  
  
And Roxas is so going to hell, he really is, but he hasn’t had sex in four fucking years and for all that he’s a badly dressed, punkass _teenager_ this kid is hitting all of his buttons. When Axel’s eyes light up—knowing he’s won—and leans in for a kiss, Roxas meets him halfway, a whimper grating at the back of his throat.  
  
.  
  
For such a short little asshole, Axel is demanding as hell. That first kiss is all teeth and tongue—not inexperienced, but sloppy, _enthusiastic_. Roxas’ head thunks back against the wall, just shy of painful when Axel gets a fistful of hair and yanks him closer, and then he’s crawling his way up Roxas’ body, giving this little bounce of a jump and wrapping his legs around Roxas’ waist. It almost unbalances him, because he’s only got one hand to lock under the kid’s ass, but Axel’s solving that problem too, because his legs are fucking vices. When Roxas pulls back to give the kid a look, Axel chuckles low in his throat and yanks him forward, breathes into his ear— “Martial arts when I was little, the works. I’m _very_ bendy.”  
  
Which, okay, yeah, that goes straight to his dick, a fact that Axel apparently notices, because he bites at Roxas’ ear and grinds them together, throwing his head back and gasping.   
  
“ _Fuck_ , dude—bed, couch, floor, I don’t give a shit, just get _in_ me already.”  
  
“Lube—” Roxas gasps, hips twitching against Axel’s, because he might have a couple condoms somewhere, but he hasn’t had lube in _years_.  
  
Axel laughs again and licks a long line up his throat. “You really think I would have come to your house without supplies? C’mon man, I ain’t stupid.”  
  
Roxas groans and lets his head thunk back against the wall once more before staggering away. He makes it halfway down the hall before they kind of spill over, and okay, apparently they’re going to fuck on the floor because the second they’re horizontal Axel is sitting up and tugging off his scarf and shirt, tossing the beanie aside and going for his zipper. God, Roxas hasn’t fucked on the floor in years, not since that time that he and Hayner got blazed the summer of senior year and ended up fumbling through some really awkward handjobs on his bedroom floor.   
  
Axel grins down at him and rolls his hips, pulling his zipper down all slow-like, revealing pale flesh and coarse red hair. His boxers are plaid and _bright green_ , fuck.   
  
Kicking off your pants is almost always awkward, there’s no way to make that weird wriggle sexy when you’ve got to brace most of your weight on your partner and avoid kneeing them in the balls, but Axel _almost_ manages it, kicking his boxers off with his stupid green skinny jeans and—  
  
His cock is _pretty_. Roxas has had sex with a grand total of two guys—Hayner off and on through high school and college, and this really suave red head he’d met at a bar in Rio—but he’s never ever looked at someone else’s dick and thought it was pretty. Axel’s cut—smooth and long, curved ever so slightly to the right, flushed red to the root. Roxas wants to lick it—he wants to wrap his lips around it—wants Axel to fuck his mouth until his voice is wrecked.  
  
“You wanna suck it, don’t you?” Axel asks, the smug rasp of youth, and tilts his hips up in invitation. He crawls up Roxas’ body, until he’s got his knees pressed into the carpet on either side of Roxas’ head, balls brushing up against his chin. “There, made it easy for you,” he drawls, and Roxas makes a needy noise and wraps his lips around the head.  
  
He hasn’t sucked dick in forever, since that guy in Rio, which was what? Seven years ago? But Hayner always said that sucking dick was like riding a bike—you never really forget how to do it.   
  
Axel groans, hips twitching forward and then Roxas has a mouthful of dick sitting heavy on his tongue. He swallows around it, dragging his tongue roughly against the underside, but can’t do much more in this position.  
  
“Fuck, dude,” Axel gasps. Roxas can’t see much more than the curve of his belly, the sharp angle of his rib cage, and one pale pink nipple. He shudders like that, just a smooth, anonymous silhouette of skin, and then collapses forward, until his belly’s touching Roxas’ nose, fingers curling in the carpet.  
  
“If you’re gonna suck it, then _suck it_ ,” he growls, thrusting forward sharply, dick brushing up against the back of Roxas’ throat. He chokes a little, spluttering, drool spilling out around Axel’s dick, and is forced to either swallow and work with it or choke. He swallows and Axel hisses, long and slow between his teeth, thrusting again—pulling out real slow and snapping his hips so it slides back down his throat almost too fast.   
  
He shakes, body trembling above Roxas, and fucks his mouth—hard and fast, eventually shifting so he’s got two hands fisted tight into Roxas’ hair, using it as a handle.  
  
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he groans, and pulls out, dick leaving a streak of spit on Roxas’ chin.  
  
Roxas stares at him for a moment, blankly, and licks his lips. He likes how raw they feel, swollen and puffy—how his throat is almost-not-quite sore. His mind feels blank. He has no idea what Axel is doing.  
  
Axel notices. He laughs again, grinning dangerously down at him. “I don’t wanna come yet,” he explains, hissing when Roxas licks at the head of his cock, greedy for the feel of it stuffed down his throat. “God, you’re such a little cockslut,” Axel murmurs. “Maybe I should fuck you, huh? Would you like that? I’d bend you over, push you down until you’re eating carpet and slide into that sweet ass—fuck you until you’re sobbing.”  
  
Roxas whimpers, cock twitching, smearing pre-come against his boxers. He wants that—wants it so bad he can taste it—so bad that he can feel it; Axel pounding into him, yanking his head back with a hand to his hair. “Fuck,” he whines, breath hitching.  
  
“Mmm, maybe later, yeah? If I don’t wear you out too much, old man.”  
  
Roxas blinks and Axel’s got a tube in his hand, squirting lube all over his fingers and reaching back, between his legs. Roxas has a perfect view from where he is—could probably lean forward and slide his tongue between Axel’s fingers if he wanted to.   
  
“Dude, make yourself useful. There’s a condom in my pocket—no, they’re right by your head—yeah, there you go, put that on.”  
  
It’s just a regular condom, not fancy or anything. He hisses as he tears the foil open and slides it down over his dick, so very tempted to just keep touching himself. When he looks back, Axel’s got four fucking fingers buries inside himself, lip bitten almost bloody, dick rock hard and flushed so red. He’s got his eyes fixed on Roxas’ cock like a starving man—hungry, greedy, and who was he calling a cockslut, really? Roxas’ dick isn’t bad—he’s never had any complaints. He’s not as long as Axel is, but he’s a lot thicker, more so than most of the dicks he’s seen.   
  
“Okay, yeah, I’m good,” Axel finally breathes, eyes bright, breath coming in short, uneven gasps. He scrambles back down, lining himself up and sinking down, so sweet, so amazing, so—  
  
“Roll over,” Axel growls, voice rough with need. “I want you on top of me.”  
  
It takes them a minute to find a position they’re both comfortable, but they settle with Axel contorted into a weird shape on his side, Roxas fucking up into him, resting most of his weight on his elbow so he doesn’t completely fuck up his wrist.  
  
“Faster, _shit_ , fuck me like you mean it,” he hisses, cursing until he’s apparently satisfied with the vicious pace that Roxas finally settles into. Skin slaps against skin and the carpet’s burning his knees, but Axel’s warm and tight, squeezing around Roxas’ dick.  
  
Axel comes first, which isn’t much of a surprise, him being a fucking teenager. His body goes tight everywhere, back arching as he shakes, and Roxas gasps, surprised by the sudden pressure; he manages one, two more thrusts before he shakes apart, collapsing onto Axel’s sweaty back.  
  
“Fuck,” Axel hisses, groaning when Roxas pulls out and slumps over, so he’s not crushing the kid.  
  
“That was such a bad idea,” Roxas mutters into the carpet. He just fucked a kid half his fucking age—he could go to _jail_ for this—a kid who made his brain go to mush, who fucked him so hard he’s all tingly.   
  
“Mm,” Axel replies, laughing. “I’ve got some homework to finish, but maybe afterwards I can follow up on that promise I made earlier, hmm?”   
  
Roxas calls back up that image of him on his knees, Axel rutting into him, and his exhausted cock twitches a little against his belly. Fuck, this kid has _homework_ to finish, he shouldn’t be fucking him at all.  
  
“Yeah, okay,” he finally sighs, because whatever, if he’s going to hell he might as well do it blissed out from a spectacular orgasm. “You want me to cook something or should I order in pizza?”  
  
“Pizza,” Axel chirps, rolling to his feet and stretching. His back cracks loudly. “Pineapples and anchovies.”  
  
Roxas slants him a horrified look. Axel laughs. “Okay, fine, pineapples and ham. Maybe some bacon.”  
  
“They have a name for that, y’know,” he mutters into the floor, watching as Axel trots off down his hallway, pert ass taunting him. God, what did he get himself into.  
  
.  
  
Axel answers the door completely naked and grinning, accepting the pizza and yelling over his shoulder for Roxas to come pay the guy.  
  
Roxas blushes hotly when the delivery man gives him a dirty look, hands him a twenty, and tells him to keep the change.  
  
“You know you’re an asshole, right?” he says when the door is closed. Axel just laughs at him, mouth full of steaming cheese.  
  
.  
  
He hadn’t gone into this expecting to get an underage boyfriend out of the mess. He’d just saved a kid from getting hit by a car one day, and now he’s getting the shit fucked out of him around the clock.  
  
Axel comes over after he gets off school, breaks into Roxas’ apartment, drops his bookbag on the kitchen table, and does homework until Roxas gets home, at which point he drops what he’s doing and is on Roxas so fast that he can barely get the door shut behind him.  
  
For the most part they stick to the apartment, but a couple times they go for walks in the park. On one memorable occasion, Axel pushes him down into the bushes on the side of a bike trail and rides him until he’s whimpering.  
  
A month into it, Roxas calls up Kairi, desperate, and confesses everything to her. His dead brother’s widow was his friend first, and she’s always given him good advice.  
  
“He’s _how_ old?” she shrieks, voice so high-pitched that he winces and tugs the phone away from his ear.  
  
Before he can say anything he can hear her move slightly away from the speaker and shout, “Riku, Roxas found himself some jailbait.”  
  
They don’t stop laughing until he finally gets fed up and just hangs up on him.  
  
.  
  
“So,” Axel says one night. They’re lying sprawled across the couch, Axel clothed in just his scarf and socks, Roxas in less than that, watching some shitty B-list horror film from the eighties. “What’s the likelihood that you can pick me up from school tomorrow?”  
  
“Zero,” Roxas drones. “No chance at all, zilch, nada, fuck no.”  
  
“Please?” Axel asks, lip wobbling a little.  
  
.  
  
Seven months is how long it takes for Roxas to realize that something’s a little bit wrong. It starts with Axel’s birthday, when he comes home (because it’s home now, apparently) with weird, rust colored stains on his sleeves.  
  
When Roxas asks him about it he just shrugs. “Science experiment,” he says, yawning. Then, “Can we get curry tonight?”  
  
After that, it’s all little things—the darkness that creeps into his eyes sometimes when he’s holding Roxas down, the way his smirk curls wrong and sharp, how sometimes there’ll be weird rust-red smears on his stupid, stupid loafers.  
  
It isn’t really normal, he thinks, to feel so uneasy around his boyfriend, something that’s not quite fear taking up residence in his throat.  
  
“Fuck, Roxas,” Axel hisses, balls deep inside of him. There are scratch marks all up and down his flanks, bite marks bruised into his skin, and a ball gag stuffed into his mouth. His wrists are tied together around the heel of the couch, thighs kept spread wide by some contraption consisting of a metal bar and some straps. It’s the first time Roxas has broken down and let them fuck without a condom, after an std test on both of their parts, and it’s a Saturday, so Axel’s kept him this way for hours, fucking him every hour, slowly filling him up with his come. His muscles are screaming, but he feels so used and sore and awesome.  
  
He’s such a weird kid. He hadn’t been kidding about the anchovies and pineapple that first night—he likes soap operas and has a weird fascination with _legitimately_ watching paint dry. He likes tying Roxas up and fucking him until he's limping at work the next morning, and never lets a day pass without sucking a bruise into Roxas’ skin.  
  
Kids are allowed to be weird though, and none of those things are t _hat_ strange.  
  
He couldn’t have known.  
  
.  
  
He figures it out the night that Axel comes back with blood flecking against his wrists, and just like that, all the weird stains and blank, dangerous looks make sense.  
  
Maybe it’s animal blood, he rationalizes at first, but that night the news talks about the latest of a string of violent murders in the area. There’s no pattern to them, no connection that they can see, but at this point they’re mostly sure it’s done by the same person.   
  
He wouldn’t have thought anything of that either, if it weren’t for the fact that as he’s swallowing his pad thai he glances over to Axel. Axel, who’s staring at the television with this weird, cold look on his face, a strange little smile playing around his mouth. Roxas _remembers_ that look, from the first day he'd met him—remembers Axel looking at Roxas' blood streaked across the pavement like it was beautiful. The way he'd looked at Axel and faked sympathy so badly that it churned his gut.   
  
He blinks and then Axel’s looking at him, that flat, cold look still present for a precious few seconds before he smiles, life bleeding back into his eyes—affection making his smile go soft.  
  
 _Fuck_ , Roxas thinks.   
  
.  
  
He isn’t the type to jump to conclusions. He isn’t. Maybe he’s imagining it. Maybe Axel just gets a little weird sometimes.   
  
He still does his homework at Roxas’ kitchen table. Sometimes Roxas even helps him with it, taking him to the store to buy supplies for various science projects.   
  
(The one time Roxas had asked about his parents Axel had closed down, expression going out of his face. “They died,” he’d said. Roxas winced and hadn’t brought it up again.)  
  
He can’t be a fucking serial killer, that’s a stupid idea. Isn’t it?  
  
.  
  
Then one day he finds a bloody knife in Axel’s bookbag—a coil of rope in a pocket that perfectly match the last victim’s rope burns.  
  
He shakes apart as Axel fucks him that night, fear an inky dark smear against his heart.  
  
“You’re mine,” Axel whispers against his neck, sucking a bruise into the skin there.  
  
.  
  
“I love you,” Axel says happily, and Roxas’ heart cracks right in two.  
  
.  
  
He presses a gun to Axel’s temple one night, when they’re lying in bed beneath the cool sheets. Roxas had bought the gun a couple days before, the day after he’d found the knife, but he’s never wanted to use it.   
  
Axel’s supposed to be sleeping, but when Roxas whimpers, hand trembling, he blinks his eyes open. “What’s taking so long?” he asks, voice sleepy and soft.   
  
Roxas sobs once, fist pressed to his mouth. Axel quirks a humorless smirk. “I won’t stop you. I deserve it for what I’ve done—you know it, I know it, what’s the problem here?” he asks, like he had that first day he’d shown up in Roxas’ house.  
  
Axel reaches up and strokes the line of his jaw, gently, like he’s petting a frightened animal. Though, Roxas supposes, right now he _is_ a frightened animal. “I’d rather you did it, anyway,” Axel says thoughtfully. Then— “Roxas?” he asks, eyebrows knitting together.   
  
“Fuck,” Roxas hisses, finger tightening on the trigger.  
  
“I do love you, you know,” Axel remarks, eyes going impossibly fond. “So fucking much, ever since you first touched me. Your fingerprints blanket my body, and mine yours. I—”  
  
He stops, like he’s thinking about what he’s going to say. “I would kill for you, you know. I would take a bullet for you in a heartbeat, I would die for you.” His voice hitches. “My only love.”  
  
Roxas gasps, wet and ragged, and does the only thing he can do.  
  
This boy has broken him apart so completely, clawed his way up under his rib cage the same way he sawed his second victim's open when he ripped out his heart. Axel’s ripped out _Roxas’s_ heart, and he thinks that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t find it in himself to leave this boy.  
  
He drops the gun onto the pillow next to Axel’s head and wraps himself around him, muffling his sobs with the hollow of Axel’s throat.  
  
“Shush,” Axel whispers. “There you go.”  
  
.  
  
Love is, after all, helping someone hide the bodies.  
  



End file.
